Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Traveled with a partner to the Boott Spur fingers in GOS. There was obvious snow transport occurring on the ridge, and it only increased with the wind as we climbed higher. Climbing Gully 4, isolated cracking in the most recent melt-freeze crust was observed. It was very isolated and did not step down into anything else, and didn't propagate more than a foot. We dug a pit on a 43 deg. convexity on the climber's left side, up roughly 4800'. The slope was SE facing, and the snow depth was 260cm. There was a small layer of new snow on top of a very thin sun crust, with some 4F snow and another crust below. About 20cm down, there was a density change (1F to 4F, then back to 1F) in the layer of snow above the 12/29 crust, and both stability tests (ECTN13/CT15) failed on this layer. Though we did have failures in our CT and ECT, I think the snowpack remained stable overall due to the bridging from the additional ice crusts, but I'm not certain. There was a lot of moisture in the snow, and even the larger grains where our tests failed looked more like melt forms that were rounding. The mix of breakable/nonbreakable crusts made for some interesting skiing on the way down.